Sunday, 21 October 2012

Science cannot explain how events in the brain produce mental experiences, or how mental intentions produce effects in the brain, such as those which are transmitted via the nervous system to give rise to the voluntary movement of muscles. This gap in our understanding of mind/brain interactions is known as The Hard Problem.

Over 140 years ago John Tyndall wrote:"... the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why.

Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.

Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know, when we love, that the motion is in one direction, and, when we hate, that the motion is in the other; but the "Why?" would remain as unanswerable as before."

And in those intervening 140 years, science has made no progress whatsoever in addressing these questions.

So why is the Hard Problem so hard?

Is it just that we aren't yet smart enough to solve it, or is it that we never will be smart enough to solve it? Or is the Hard Problem totally different from any other scientific problem because it involves a non-physical system: the Mind?

The period between Yule and Candlemas was the gestational period when the new animal and plant life, though growing and stirring, was still hidden in the body of its mother, or in the case of vegetation within the body of mother earth.

The significance of Halloween to Buddhists now becomes clear. In the Druid system the period of seven weeks between Halloween and Yule is the gap between death of the old and conception of the new year. This corresponds to the 49 days of the bardo.

Halloween thus symbolises the entry of the disembodied consciousness into the intermediate state between leaving one body and occupying another.

If the mind reacts with panic then a samsaric rebirth, possibly in unpleasant realms, is inevitable.

However if the bardo-being recognises these apparitions as hallucinations - projections and reflections of its own negative karma resulting from evil actions - then liberation remains possible.

The reasons for the Druidic custom of dressing up as ghosts, demons and so on may be to symbolise that these scary bardoapparitions are in fact nothing other than aspects or appearances of the person's own self.

"...The point here being, of course, that as Buddhism has moved into new
cultural spaces it has adopted the forms of those cultures, using them
to express peculiarly Buddhist themes and sometimes supplanting their
original meanings entirely [1]. Naturally, as Buddhism becomes rooted
in the West we should expect the same treatment to be applied to Western
cultural forms, even though by all accounts it appears to be appalling
to many culturally conservative Buddhists that Westerners should want to
practice and celebrate Buddhadharma in ways that resonate for their own
cultures. But, speaking for myself, I see this as a good thing - I am not Tibetan/Japanese/Chinese/Thai/etc. and I do not wish to be [2].

Which brings me to an upcoming and super-fun holiday: Halloween [3]! If
there is any holiday that I want/is a good candidate for
being Buddhized, this is it. There are several reasons why this is so:

Although the broad outlines of the origins and meaning of Halloween
are known, they are not believed in. The holiday is widely celebrated
by Western (at least, North American) society, but is largely devoid of
meaning. Indeed, the actual meaning of “trick or treat” never
occurred to me until I was an adult – it had always just been a phrase
that got you candy (which was good enough).

More specifically, Halloween has no Christian content,
which makes Buddhization much easier for two reasons. First and most
importantly, to Buddhize Halloween will not cause outrage among/backlash
from the Christian community. Secondly, there’s no metaphysics that
will need abandonment or difficult reworking in order to fit with
Buddhist thought.

The West needs to take the dark side of life more seriously.

There are tantalizing hints of existing traditions that could, by
mere suggestion, be transformed from simple fun into meaningful ritual.

It’s so so so fun.

I can think of a few obvious ways this could be done:

Teachings about hungry ghosts/hell realms.

Pointing out the emptiness of ‘external’ perceptions (what’s behind the mask?).

Transforming emotional reactions, demonstrating purity of the world
(the old peeled grapes as eyeballs, spaghetti as brains, etc.).

Chod practice!

Death and rebirth teachings/meditations."

Dr Yutang Lin blessing a ghost to leave a haunted house and be reborn in the Pure Land